Can the Soviets win in Kursk?

[Volcano Man]

Well said. The trick is always in the VP levels. First comes the desire to make the campaign play out at least semi-historically, or at least influence a historical behavior. We can probably remember a point in which the K43 campaign was such that the German attacker always chose to attack northwest, away from the historical pincer axis of advance. The addition of heavier fortified positions and more VPs along the historical route helped address this. After the Germans were basically "forced" along a more historical axis of advance, then the VP levels need to change and so on.

Probably the best approach as to VP levels, in the case of the attacking side, is where a historical result could be considered a high "draw" or low "minor victory". Doing something better than historical can be considered a victory, and something worse would be a defeat. Of course it all depends on the campaign too, and whether or not the other side was decisively defeated. For example, Compass '40. You would think that it would make a terrible campaign, but the approach was to say that the British victory was a stroke of genius and that a historical performance would yield a victory. Anything less than this would yield a draw or defeat, so the British are constantly racing against the clock. I don't know how the approach turned out, because I haven't yet played it myself -- but even a historical approach like this still yields a "chance" for balance for the Italian player.